Off-road motor sport is the biggest cause of major trauma, injury and death in sport, according to a new study.

In a study analysing sport and recreation related injuries in Victoria between 2001 and 2007, researchers found major trauma, including deaths, had increased by 10 per cent each year with the highest number of deaths attributed to off-road motor sports, including motor-bikes and fishing.

Analysing data from the Victorian State Trauma Registry (VSTR) and the National Coroners Information System, researchers led by Monash University’s Dr Nadine Andrew, recorded 1019 non-fatal major trauma cases and 218 deaths during the six-year study period.

Off-road motor sports had the highest rate of major trauma, including head injury, and death with 119 cases per 100,000 each year, followed by equestrian sports (54), power boating and water skiing (15), and cycling (13). Off-road motor sports (10) had the highest death rate followed by fishing with nine incidents of drowning deaths.

Dr Andrew, from the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, said the figures shouldn't discourage people from engaging in an active and healthy lifestyle.

“Much of the increase in major injuries and deaths can be attributed to increases in major trauma rates associated with off-road motor sports, cycling and Australian football,” Dr Andrew said.

“These results highlight the need for co-ordinated injury prevention, particularly within the areas most at risk and we hope it will assist sporting industries to implement programs to reduce injuries.

“It’s important to note that people involved in sport have only a small chance of trauma, injury or death so compared to the health benefits, the risk is considerably low.”

Head injury (21 per cent), was the most common injury followed by injuries to the spine (16 per cent).

Other sporting activities considered life threatening or likely to cause injury were power boating, ice and snow sports, Australian rules football and swimming. Fishing had a high death rate but no major injuries.

In the last 7 months, more drivers have died than cyclists in the last 12 years put together. 1 driver dies every 2.5 days. The equivalent statistic for cyclists is 73 days.

The chances of dying or suffering major trauma in a car are far greater than they are by participating in any sports. If you were a player driving to a footy match, you'd be hundreds of times more likely to be severly injured on the road than on the field.

I don't know why they chose to ignore this elephant in the room when writing this article. Is it meant to scare people off sports?

What a stupid decision to include road toll numbers in cycling but not motorsport - or walking for that matter - let alone not adjusting for hours of exposure. I'm sure CA could have given them the number of cyclists killed/injured during permitted events.

rkelsen wrote:The chances of dying or suffering major trauma in a car are far greater than they are by participating in any sports. If you were a player driving to a footy match, you'd be hundreds of times more likely to be severly injured on the road than on the field.

Thats not actually true. Your entire transport exposure including work and other tasks is more likely to injure or kill you, but your transport requirements related to your sport is only a very small percentage of your total exposure.

Going away for the weekend/holiday/visit relatives is equivalent to the leisure activity component of cycling, and involves people dying in the associated transport tasks. Likewise going out on friday night and driving your car home tanked (whilst the car driving is considered transport, in reality its actually part of a leisure task).

It might be feasible to read each fatalities police report in the coroners database from 2001 to 2007 and assign purpose of trip to most of them, but its impossible to do for injuries, because hospitals don't record purpose of trip, and the coroners database doesn't have police reports for injuries (and many injuries do not have police reports). ie their injuries must have transport injuries in them for cycling, its really not possible to exclude them, the data doesn't exist to do so.